Cultural Meaning, Explanations of Illness, and the Development of Comparative Frameworks

This selection introduces three frameworks for comparing beliefs about disease and the treatment of illness. Garro applies the frameworks to two case studies and demonstrates some strengths and weaknesses of each. Her analysis focuses on the general population rather than healers, but it also describes the types of healers in each setting and illustrates the principle of medical pluralism examined in Part I. This selection is explicit about how the research was done and the kinds of information generated by specific research methods. Attention to methodology will be useful for the selections that follow.